Light seemed like a pretty straightforward element. At least, when compared to electricity. Does that sound backward? Well, after this, maybe you'll agree: electricity is trickier.
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Color: Purple
Sin: Wrath
Virtue: Wisdom
Nature and Applications: Most people don't have a grasp on the concept of electricity, and in ancient times, even the most scholarly people believed it only existed in the sky. To this day, most people only know it as lightning, as some foreign spirit in the clouds that only comes down to punish any who dare anger it.
The rare masters of this element profess a poetic irony in the superstition surrounding electricity, particularly because it plays a crucial role in every human mind. The layman equates electricity to lightning, and therefore as an irrational and strictly destructive force. However, the principle element that causes lightning is actually the source of rational thought. While light fuels the consciousness of water, wind, and earth, the elements lack the guidance of true thought, their awareness confined to blind emotions and impulses. Electricity is what sets the living mind above the elements.
Electricity is a pragmatist. It craves efficiency and order, and therefore, reacts violently when order is upset. Like many great scholars, it is curious and easily absorbed in the search for knowledge. Just as a professor is prone to strike a student who interrupts their reading, electricity attacks anything that disturbs its flow.
The most conspicuous use of this element is always in its offensive capacity. The human body is regulated by the nervous system's natural charge, so a sorcerer of electricity can easily disrupt that control by introducing a foreign current. Further, many physical elements naturally try to resist any invading flows of electricity, and the conflict between matter and energy can result in burning. Electricity is a fickle element, and requires special conditions in order to be weaponized, but its users are famously good at finding clever ways to meet those requirements. For instance, many common weapons double as a natural candidate for storing charges and transmitting shocks.
When used with subtlety, it has more constructive applications. To know an electric mage is to know an inventor; their understanding of the energy inspires the creation of all sorts of gadgets. Electricity is known for its ability to coordinate with light and heat, and as such, electricians are known to employ devices that can make light, cook, and even do manual labor for them.Electricity is truly a tool that only the clever can use.
In a more direct applcation, since electricity is such a fundamental part of thought, these mages are known to be better at understanding what other people are thinking.
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Alright, so as you may be able to tell, I don't have as strong a grasp on how electricity will play out in Arbiter. The difficulty is that, usually, sorcerers can pull their element directly from the environment. While I could technically just claim a mage can siphon from the charges in the electron clouds of all the matter around them, but electricity is special. Asperger special, to be precise. The title finally makes sense! Asperger, Ass burger, butt sandwich, you get it... essentially, electricity is the Patricia Tannis (Borderlands) of the elements.
Brilliant, but irritable to the point of neurosis. While, like heat, light, and even life, sorcerers will still source their power from their environments, electricity won't simply gather through the air. They need some method of conduction or generation.To try and gather it directly from the atmosphere's molecules or from the earth's particles or from whatever substance disturbs electricity's love of order, it would probably just have an autistic-style fit and fry you for violating the system. So you have to play ball and have some kind of battery, generator, or conductive tool to collect the raw energy before you can cast with it.
Say they're in an environment with an abnormally strong charge, like one of those super sandstorms in the Sahara Desert (rumor has it, they produce ground-level lightning storms). Perhaps a mage has a device to capture and redirect or even store that energy for later. Maybe they live their lives around the gathering of energy, they're the 'come prepared' sort of battler. It could all be about batteries, and while they might have countless generators around the house to convert light, heat, and motion into electricity slowly over time, they can only use as much electricity as they bring to the battle in the form of a limited-capacity and heavy battery? Maybe they just scooch across the carpet in their onesies a lot?
For hybrid mages, perhaps they can use other elements to help them generate electricity. For instance, a light mage's understanding of light might enable him to produce solar power (photovoltaics) in some way. Electricity is among the most difficult elements to use, and to me, that suggests most electric users can use other elements and thereby generate electricity by using another element in a clever fashion. Unless your personality is completely high-functioning autism, a la Rainman, you probably studied your way up to electricity through another school of magic.
Also, magnets. How do they work? (you lose points if you know why that's supposed to be funny)
Seriously though, magnetism falls into their specialty.
This is the best opportunity yet to get ideas from you guys. How might an electrician (an electric magician, get it?!) source their spells? Plus, I electricity is such an awkward word, what should we call this school? Shock magic? Furthermore, there's a distinct lack of spell description here. I have more ideas than lightning strikes, but this is already long, and a lot of those ideas incorporate concepts that warrant their own articles. Be as creative and indirect as you want: how could you see electricity being used in battle?
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